Analyses of God beliefs, atheism, religion, faith, miracles, evidence for religious claims, evil and God, arguments for and against God, atheism, agnosticism, the role of religion in society, and related issues.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Like lots of the utterly bizarre and nonsensical claims of Christianity, we’ve all become inured to the strange counter logic of the notion of original sin. Lots of bellicose Christians will invoke a sanctimonious, and strangely confident tone about the inherent depravity of humans. We’re prone to wickedness by our nature; we’re morally depraved; we’re deeply deserving of God’s scorn and punishment. There’s even a kind of perverse pride in their eyes when they point to our downfall in the Garden of Eden and how it shows that we’ll get what we deserve.

Which brings us to another strange component of the Original Sin doctrine. It’s not just that we’re wicked, but we’re wicked and deserving of punishment because of something that your ancient ancestors did. In religious contexts, that notion doesn’t bother them at all. But of course, if you tried to get someone to pay for their dad’s defaulted mortgage, or put one of them in jail for a crime that their mom did, they’d scream about how grossly unjust that is. Once people have heard all this surreal religious metaphor and metaphysics enough, it just sounds perfectly natural and normal. But when we take it out of its ordinary context and cloak it with equivalent but unfamiliar language, the insanity becomes clear: “So there’s a giant, invisible space being who lives in the sky and he can read minds and grant wishes?” “And you go to your sacred space god worship session once a week you drink the blood and eat the tissue of another space god who is the big one’s offspring?” Seriously? But in the Christian’s mind, it all makes sense somehow that someone who existed thousands of years ago made a bad choice (Eve), and even though you didn’t know this person or have anything to do with the decision in question, you deserve to be punished for their crimes. And by eating juice and crackers and calling it the blood and flesh of Jesus, it is possible to somehow rectify the sin debt.

Which brings us to the question of what exactly it was that Adam and Eve did wrong to bring all this tenacious guilt and horrible suffering down on the rest of humanity. One of the many paradoxes of Eden is that Adam and Eve presumably didn’t understand the difference between good and evil before they ate from the tree. It was the tree of KNOWLEDGE of good and evil, after all. So they couldn’t have possibly understood or appreciated the implications of God’s threat. Nor would it have been clear to them that disobeying a command, which is distinct from doing something immoral, was somehow wrong. Recall your frustrated mother saying, “because I’m the mommy, that’s why!” Nevertheless, when Adam and Eve did this thing that they couldn’t have possibly appreciated as wrong, they tainted all of humanity with some sort of metaphysical stain that cannot be removed unless those people adopt the right sort of belief states about God. And aside from not doing what they were told—recall that freewill is usually celebrated by Christians as God’s great gift to us too—there’s no plausible interpretation of the whole thing that could possibly warrant the reaction. I mean, it’s not like they went out and committed genocide or something. He said “Don’t eat from this tree.” That’s not a moral commandment, it’s just him flexing his muscles. Consider the difference between the law that puts the speed limit at 65 and the one that prohibits rape. Neither eating fruit, nor refusing to do something that a power tripping-bully demands of you are immoral. Nevertheless, because of their action, every one of the billions of humans to descend from them is condemned to an eternity of unbearable suffering. Oh sure, THAT’S fair.

Recently there have been a bunch of cases in the news where some slimy preacher who has cloistered himself into a compound in the boonies with a bunch of naïve followers. Then he precedes to lord his power and religious authority over them so that he can rape all the girls, banish the boys, all while hiding behind the banner of our religious tolerance. Imagine if one of these guys insisted that one of the girls have sex with him, but when she refused, he set about to inflict horrible suffering on her and all of her descendents. Would we defend his actions by insisting that they had, after all, willfully disobeyed his commandments?

Imagine a parent who puts a ripe, sweet apple (Genesis doesn’t say it was an apple, by the way) down on a chair in front of a normal, hungry, curious toddler, and then says, “Whatever you do, don’t eat this.” And then she walks off. Then when the inevitable happens, she storms into the room and thunders at the child for breaking her arbitrary and pointless rule. Next, she puts the kid on a plane by himself, sends him to be dropped off in the middle of the Sahara desert with no preparations, no food, no water, and no aid. But it gets even better. She arranges it so that every single person who descends from that little boy in the desert (if he survives) from now on must 1) believe in the Great Mother in the Sky, 2) obey all of her commandments no matter how antique, or pointless they are, and 3) if they don’t comply, they will be tortured mercilessly for eons. All because the clueless toddler, who didn’t have any knowledge of good and evil after all, took a bite from the apple. Not because anyone did anything that was actually wrong like commit genocide or enslave a race, but because he broke a capricious and irrational rule.

“Oh, but I don’t think all that stuff literally happened,” says the moderate Christian. “Those are just enriching stories that communicate important moral, social, and cultural lessons.”

Fine. How exactly is it better to endlessly thrust this harmful nonsense into a child’s head and reinforce it in a thousand other ways when you’d readily admit that you don’t even think it is true? How can people form mentally healthy self-images or come to value humanity for their remarkable capacities and virtues against this misanthropic backdrop?

So when an Original Sin Christian is feeling sycophantic about the inherent moral corruption of all of humanity, and about humanity’s need for a long, hard spanking because they’ve been sooo naughty don’t expect the rest of us to even comprehend your point.

11 comments:

anon
said...

Ad hominem and straw man all up in your post. Instead of attacking right wing religious nuts maybe a person of your academic caliber should be taking on the Professors at Notre Dame, BYU, and Duke. Oh I bet you have already refuted these guys along with the 50 plus noble laureates and the majority of philosophers throughout history who believed in god?

You never did answer the question as to why so many smart people believe in god? How does an atheist deal with this reality? Please don’t run away and cry foul like you did last time professor Mcquack…

PART I. Nobel Scientists (20-21 Century)

Albert Einstein Nobel Laureate in Physics Jewish

Max Planck Nobel Laureate in Physics Protestant

Erwin Schrodinger Nobel Laureate in Physics Catholic

Werner Heisenberg Nobel Laureate in Physics Lutheran

Robert Millikan Nobel Laureate in Physics probably Congregationalist

Charles Hard Townes Nobel Laureate in Physics United Church of Christ (raised Baptist)

"One of the many paradoxes of Eden is that Adam and Eve presumably didn’t understand the difference between good and evil before they ate from the tree. It was the tree of KNOWLEDGE of good and evil, after all. So they couldn’t have possibly understood or appreciated the implications of God’s threat. Nor would it have been clear to them that disobeying a command, which is distinct from doing something immoral, was somehow wrong."

Uh hello there but isnt it true that a child hasnt knowledge of good and evil but still grasp that he must obey his parents commnad? sheesh that was an easy refutation.

1- Your argument about who believed in god is irrelevant; it's called an Appeal to Authority. Just because famous people through history believed in something doesn't make that something true. If you think about this for a while, you'll realize it's a non-argument. The vast majority of the most respected scientists today do not believe in god. Does that mean god doesn't exist? Maybe they have new information that helps them come to a better conclusion than, say, T.S. Elliot.

If you want to learn more about why "Smart People" believe in a god, I'd recommend doing some research into current brain theory or perhaps reading Michael Shermer's Excellent books, "Why do we believe?" and "Why do smart people believe dumb things?"

2- The point of the paradox issue is that Adam and Eve theoretically didn't know what disobeying WAS, unlike a child who has learned, through live experiences, what the consequences are of misbehaving. They lived in a paradise where they had everything and they knew no consequences. Paradise - think about what that means. These people had, supposedly, never experienced anything but bliss. This is entirely different than a child's experiences in this world.

Even if you still don't understand the paradox issue, then you still have to come to grips with the absurd notion that because a person made a bad choice thousands of years ago, the rest of humanity must suffer. Since you brought up the idea of a child in this world, try and imagine what a child could do that would justify you punishing their descendants for all eternity.

And, please don't say the punishment is infinite because the crime was infinite - the word infinite is meaningless in this context. It was a simple mistake if these people (Adam and Eve) were essentially ignorant.

Also, arguing that "it's all ok because Jesus can save everything," won't cut it because billions of people have suffered since.

1- Your argument about who believed in god is irrelevant; it's called an Appeal to Authority.

Not only is his list irrelevant, some of the entries are highly questionable. I notice that it contains Albert Einstein, who was culturally Jewish but as far as religion goes, generally described as an agnostic or pantheist. It also contains Thomas H. Huxley, the man who coined the word "agnostic" to describe his position on religion. Extremely sloppy bit of work.

1- Your argument about who believed in god is irrelevant; it's called an Appeal to Authority.

Not only is it irrelevant, it is a highly questionable list. Albert Einstein is listed as beign Jewish? He was culturally Jewish, but once wrote:

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religous convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

And Thomas H. Huxley? He's the person who coined the word agnostic to express his own view of religion.

Sorry to do it folks, but the tenor of certain posters' comments has inclined me to start moderating the discussions here. I've grown tired of all the irrelevant, off topic, deconstructive abuse from our friend, anonymous. I'll still permit every post possible.

None of the info in the bible is even remotely true, so why waste your time making a huge list of people who may or may not believe it either. You may believe in that crap but it really only shows how gullible you are. If you get to your heaven because of your stupid beliefs and I go to your hell because of mine, then so be it. I would rather cook wieners over a good fire than sit on a cloud next to the likes of you. You are a terrific bore.

At the risk of overly emboldening our anonymous friend, I have to report some sympathies.

There are, indeed, some very smart people who are theists. This is enough to refute the claim, I think, that only a complete idiot would believe in God. There are also some very smart people who don't believe in God.

I don't think we can make any useful progress by taking votes, even if we were somehow able to narrow the field of voters only to "smart people", or even "smart people throughout history".

Smart theists and smart atheists have given unsound arguments in favor of their positions. In some cases, they have even admitted that the arguments have been unsound when their errors are pointed out to them. This is as it should be. No one, whatever their religious proclivities, should continue to endorse an argument just because they want the conclusion to be true.

So what happens when a smart person gives us an argument? Do we accept it because the person giving the argument is smart? No. Do we accept it because we happen already to agree with the conclusion? No. We evaluate the argument on its own merits.

Now, here is where I say something that might be controversial. I think reasonable people might sometimes disagree over whether an argument is sound. This means that a theist and an atheist (or agnostic) might look at the same argument and arrive at different views on its soundness.

Consider William Craig's Kalam Cosmological argument, for example. Craig finds that the notion of what he calls an "actual infinite" to be at odds with his intuitions regarding what might possibly exist. Others do not share this intuition, and think that actual infinites might be quite possible. I don't think either side is crazy or irrational on this point (though I do think Craig disingenuously appeals to reason since he has sometimes made it clear that reason doesn't really matter to his convictions).

You noted the inability of humans lacking the knowledge of right & wrong to know that disobedience to an arbitrary authoritative command would be wrong. That is correct.

"And aside from not doing what they were told—recall that freewill is usually celebrated by Christians as God’s great gift to us too—"

It's further unclear how a human being who lacks freewill is able to freely accept the "gift" of freewill before he possesses it. It is more appropriate to say that freewill is a curse, not a gift, within the xian worldview.

If those eternally burning in hell could be asked, “If you could relive your life, would you accept freewill with the risk of hell, or would you accept a life without freewill & a guaranteed perfect, eternal afterlife?”, what sane person would chose the former?

As you've pointed out before, the consequences of some free choices lie far outside our ken. Had Eve been informed of the generational consequences of her disobedience (and had knowledge of good and evil), she may have thought twice. As it stands, she can't be held accountable.

Finally, if the apologist wants to insist that Man’s disobedience is directly responsible for all NATURAL evil in the universe, the apologist must then provide an account of how the act of eating fruit _nonsupernaturally_ imparts knowledge of good & evil, destabilizes plate tectonics, converts herbivores into carnivores, introduces smallpox & malaria, creates hurricanes, introduces drought & famine, & curses all subsequent generations.

A bit off-topic, but i sometimes wonder what's the use of a "Jesus" during "Jesus's time"?. I mean, the more i think of it, the more i realise that God should have sent His son when he could actually serve mankind better. During the time Jesus walked the earth, THAT itself basically was the major event that happened around. Imagine how a miracle-capable being could have helped during Hitler's War era or another similar problematic period in human History. So, what was the point of having a Jesus around back then?

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Atheism

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Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester. Teaching at CSUS since 1996. My main area of research and publication now is atheism and philosophy of religion. I am also interested in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and rational decision theory/critical thinking.

Quotes:

"Science. It works, bitches."

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

"Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time. But he loves you! He loves you and he needs money!"George Carlin 1937 - 2008

Many Paths, No God.

I don't go to church, I AM a church, for fuck's sake. I'm MINISTRY. --Al Jourgensen

Every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, “It is a matter of faith, and above reason.”- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

If life evolved, then there isn't anything left for God to do.

The universe is not fine-tuned for humanity. Humanity is fine-tuned to the universe. Victor Stenger

Skeptical theists choose to ride the trolley car of skepticism concerning the goods that God would know so as to undercut the evidential argument from evil. But once on that trolley car it may not be easy to prevent that skepticism from also undercutting any reasons they may suppose they have for thinking that God will provide them and the worshipful faithful with life everlasting in his presence. William Rowe

Unless you're one of those Easter-bunny vitalists who believes that personality results from some unquantifiable divine spark, there's really no alternative to the mechanistic view of human nature. Peter Watts

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. E.O. Wilson

Creating humans who could understand the contrast between good and evil without subjecting them to eons of horrible suffering would be an utterly inconsequential matter for an omnipotent being. MM

The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity? It would be so easy to improve upon the 10 Commandments. How about "Try not to deep fry all of your food"? Sam Harris

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody--not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms--had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would think--though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one--that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true--that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great

If atheism is a religion, then not playing chess is a hobby.

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything--anything--be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in." Sam Harris, The End of Faith, 36.

"Only a tiny fraction of corpsesfossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water." Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 127.

One cannot take, "believing in X gives me hope, makes me moral, or gives me comfort," to be a reason for believing X. It might make me moral if I believe that I will be shot the moment I do something immoral, but that doesn't make it possible for me to believe it, or to take its effects on me as reasons for thinking it is true. Matt McCormick

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Top Ten Myths about Belief in God

1. Myth: Without God, life has no meaning.

There are 1.2 billion Chinese who have no predominant religion, and 1 billion people in India who are predominantly Hindu. And 65% of Japan's 127 million people claim to be non-believers. It is laughable to suggest that none of these billions of people are leading meaningful lives.

2. Myth: Prayer works.

Numerous studies have now shown that remote, blind, inter-cessionary prayer has no effect whatsoever of the health or well-being of subject's health, psychological states, or longevity. Furthermore, we have no evidence to support the view that people who wish fervently in their heads for things that they want get those things at any higher rate than people who do not.

3. Myth: Atheists are less decent, less moral, and overall worse people than believers.

There are hundreds of millions of non-believers on the planet living normal, decent, moral lives. They love their children, care about others, obey laws, and try to keep from doing harm to others just like everyone else. In fact, in predominately non-believing countries such as in northern Europe, measures of societal health such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, per capita income, education, homicide, suicide, gender equality, and political coercion are better than they are in believing societies.

4. Myth: Belief in God is compatible with the descriptions, explanations and products of science.

In the past, every supernatural or paranormal explanation of phenomena that humans believed turned out to be mistaken; science has always found a physical explanation that revealed that the supernatural view was a myth. Modern organisms evolved from lower life forms, they weren't created 6,000 years ago in the finished state. Fever is not caused by demon possession. Bad weather is not the wrath of angry gods. Miracle claims have turned out to be mistakes, frauds, or deceptions. So we have every reason to conclude that science will continue to undermine the superstitious worldview of religion.

5. Myth: We have immortal souls that survive the death of the body.

We have mountains of evidence that makes it clear that our consciousness, our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts all depend upon the proper functioning of our brains our nervous systems to exist. So when the brain dies, all of these things that we identify with the soul also cease to exist. Despite the fact that billions of people have lived and died on this planet, we do not have a single credible case of someone's soul, or consciousness, or personality continuing to exist despite the demise of their bodies. Allegations of spirit chandlers, psychics, ghost stories, and communications with the dead have all turned out to be frauds, deceptions, mistakes, and lies.

6. Myth: If there is no God, everything is permitted. Only belief in God makes people moral.

Consider the billions of people in China, India, and Japan above. If this claim was true, none of them would be decent moral people. So Ghandi, the Buddha, and Confucius, to name only a few were not moral people on this view, not to mention these other famous atheists: Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, John Stuart Mill, Galileo, George Bernard Shaw, Gloria Steinam, James Madison, John Adams, and so on.

7. Myth: Believing in God is never a root cause of significant evil.

The counter examples of cases where it was someone's belief in God that was the direct justification for their perpetrated horrendous evils on humankind are too numerous to mention.

8. Myth: The existence of God would explain the origins of the universe and humanity.

All of the questions that allegedly plague non-God attempts to explain our origins--why are we here, where are we going, what is the point of it all, why is the universe here--still apply to the faux explanation of God. The suggestion that God created everything does not make it any clearer to us where it all came from, how he created it, why he created it, where it isall going. In fact, it raises even more difficult mysteries: how did God, operating outside the confines of space, time, and natural law "create" or "build" a universe that has physical laws? We have no precedent and maybe no hope of answering or understanding such a possibility. What does it mean to say that some disembodied, spiritual being who knows everything and has all power, "loves" us, or has thoughts, or goals, or plans? How could such a being have any sort of personal relationship with beings like us?

9. Myth: Even if it isn't true, there's no harm in my believing in God anyway.

People's religious views inform their voting, how they raise their children, what they think is moral and immoral, what laws and legislation they pass, who they are friends and enemies with, what companies they invest in, where they donate to charities, who they approve and disapprove of, who they are willing to kill or tolerate, what crimes they are willing to commit, and which wars they are willing to fight. How could any reasonable person think that religious beliefs are insignificant.

10: Myth: There is a God.

Common Criticisms of Atheism (and Why They’re Mistaken)

1. You can’t prove atheism.You can never prove a negative, so atheism requires as much faith as religion.

Atheists are frequently accosted with this accusation, suggesting that in order for non-belief to be reasonable, it must be founded on deductively certain grounds. Many atheists within the deductive atheology tradition have presented just those sorts of arguments, but those arguments are often ignored. But more importantly, the critic has invoked a standard of justification that almost none of our beliefs meet. If we demand that beliefs are not justified unless we have deductive proof, then all of us will have to throw out the vast majority of things we currently believe—oxygen exists, the Earth orbits the Sun, viruses cause disease, the 2008 summer Olympics were in China, and so on. The believer has invoked one set of abnormally stringent standards for the atheist while helping himself to countless beliefs of his own that cannot satisfy those standards. Deductive certainty is not required to draw a reasonable conclusion that a claim is true.

As for requiring faith, is the objection that no matter what, all positions require faith?Would that imply that one is free to just adopt any view they like?Religiousness and non-belief are on the same footing?(they aren’t).If so, then the believer can hardly criticize the non-believer for not believing. Is the objection that one should never believe anything on the basis of faith?Faith is a bad thing?That would be a surprising position for the believer to take, and, ironically, the atheist is in complete agreement.

2. The evidence shows that we should believe.

If in fact there is sufficient evidence to indicate that God exists, then a reasonable person should believe it. Surprisingly, very few people pursue this line as a criticism of atheism. But recently, modern versions of the design and cosmological arguments have been presented by believers that require serious consideration. Many atheists cite a range of reasons why they do not believe that these arguments are successful. If an atheist has reflected carefully on the best evidence presented for God’s existence and finds that evidence insufficient, then it’s implausible to fault them for irrationality, epistemic irresponsibility, or for being obviously mistaken.Given that atheists are so widely criticized, and that religious belief is so common and encouraged uncritically, the chances are good that any given atheist has reflected more carefully about the evidence.

3. You should have faith.

Appeals to faith also should not be construed as having prescriptive force the way appeals to evidence or arguments do. The general view is that when a person grasps that an argument is sound, that imposes an epistemic obligation of sorts on her to accept the conclusion. One person’s faith that God exists does not have this sort of inter-subjective implication. Failing to believe what is clearly supported by the evidence is ordinarily irrational. Failure to have faith that some claim is true is not similarly culpable. At the very least, having faith, where that means believing despite a lack of evidence or despite contrary evidence is highly suspect. Having faith is the questionable practice, not failing to have it.

4. Atheism is bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing.

These accusations have been dealt with countless times. But let’s suppose that they are correct. Would they be reasons to reject the truth of atheism? They might be unpleasant affects, but having negative emotions about a claim doesn’t provide us with any evidence that it is false. Imagine upon hearing news about the Americans dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki someone steadfastly refused to believe it because it was bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing. Suppose we refused to believe that there is an AIDS epidemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people in Africa on the same grounds.

5.Atheism is bad for you.Some studies in recent years have suggested that people who regularly attend church, pray, and participate in religious activities are happier, live longer, have better health, and less depression.

First, these results and the methodologies that produced them have been thoroughly criticized by experts in the field.Second, it would be foolish to conclude that even if these claims about quality of life were true, that somehow shows that there is theism is correct and atheism is mistaken.What would follow, perhaps, is that participating in social events like those in religious practices are good for you, nothing more.There are a number of obvious natural explanations.Third, it is difficult to know the direction of the causal arrow in these cases.Does being religious result in these positive effects, or are people who are happier, healthier, and not depressed more inclined to participate in religions for some other reasons?Fourth, in a number of studies atheistic societies like those in northern Europe scored higher on a wide range of society health measures than religious societies.

Given that atheists make up a tiny proportion of the world’s population, and that religious governments and ideals have held sway globally for thousands of years, believers will certainly lose in a contest over “who has done more harm,” or “which ideology has caused more human suffering.”It has not been atheism because atheists have been widely persecuted, tortured, and killed for centuries nearly to the point of extinction.

Sam Harris has argued that the problem with these regimes has been that they became too much like religions.“Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag, and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”

7.Atheists are harsh, intolerant, and hateful of religion.

Sam Harris has advocated something he calls “conversational intolerance.”For too long, a confusion about religious tolerance has led people to look the other way and say nothing while people with dangerous religious agendas have undermined science, the public good, and the progress of the human race.There is no doubt that people are entitled to read what they choose, write and speak freely, and pursue the religions of their choice.But that entitlement does not guarantee that the rest of us must remain silent or not verbally criticize or object to their ideas and their practices, especially when they affect all of us.Religious beliefs have a direct affect on who a person votes for, what wars they fight, who they elect to the school board, what laws they pass, who they drop bombs on, what research they fund (and don’t), which social programs they fund (and don’t), and a long list of other vital, public matters.Atheists are under no obligation to remain silent about those beliefs and practices that urgently need to be brought into the light and reasonably evaluated.

Real respect for humanity will not be found by indulging your neighbor’s foolishness, or overlooking dangerous mistakes.Real respect is found in disagreement.The most important thing we can do for each other is disagree vigorously and thoughtfully so that we can all get closer to the truth.

8.Science is as much a religious ideology as religion is.

At their cores, religions and science have a profound difference.The essence of religion is sustaining belief in the face of doubts, obeying authority, and conforming to a fixed set of doctrines.By contrast, the most important discovery that humans have ever made is the scientific method.The essence of that method is diametrically opposed to religious ideals:actively seek out disconfirming evidence.The cardinal virtues of the scientific approach are to doubt, analyze, critique, be skeptical, and always be prepared to draw a different conclusion if the evidence demands it.